Welcome to WALES BOOKS, an organisation established in 2000 with the aim of publicising Wales and its achievements - Croeso i WALES BOOKS, rydym yn gwmni a chafodd ei sefydlu i ddangos a gwerthu llwyddianau Cymru.

Unfortunately, we no longer publish, after making losses as an independent and unsubsidised publisher over the last decade. However, I (Terry Breverton) am still writing books for other publishers, and my publications are updated here. We would urge you to support independent bookshops, who will order any book for you, or to buy from the Welsh Books Council at www.gwales.com.

Before Wales Books/Glyndŵr Publishing began operations, there were hardly any books promoting Wales from a Welsh perspective, but we have kick-started that genre after a hiatus since World War I. For some years I edited and published wonderful non-fiction books on Wales by new authors who could not get a publisher. Few people understand that Welsh history is in effect the history of the British people – it is the oldest, and most threatened, nation in Europe. From 1995 I tried desperately to get a Welsh encyclopaedia published, with no interest from publishers, until a bowdlerised version of Breverton’s An A-Z of Wales and the Welsh was eventually published in 2000. Some years later, the Academi and Assembly finally subsidised a Welsh encyclopaedia. Several authors and editors were involved, and the book was printed overseas, but cost an incredible £64. All of our books were printed in Treforest or Llandybie in Wales and were sold to try and break even.
Since 2008 I have been a full-time writer, so have no income to subsidise publishing any longer. Sales are low on books of Welsh interest, and margins small, for instance only 85 copies of the 500 print run of The First American Novel: The Journal of Penrose, Seaman have been sold, despite it being the work of which I am most proud. I now try to get other publishers to take my works. Amberley (formerly the History Press and Tempus) is taking my work on Wales, and Quercus has taken other non-fiction books. Recently Cambria Publishing of Llandeilo has printed on-demand copies of my new and unexpurgated translation of the Physicians of Myddfai, and a rewritten edition of the Journal of Penrose, Seaman.

I really hope to do more with this website over the next few years, as an apolitical force for change in Wales. It has been neglected for some time, for instance the Welsh societies across the world have not been updated owing to time constraints. However, this was the first attempt to put such a database together – something that paid civil servants in the former Wales Tourist Board should have done years ago. Some of us have also spent a great deal of time trying to get the wonderful Owain Glyndŵr properly recognised across Wales. Politicians are afraid of cultural nationalism. Funding seems to be available for all minority interests except those of the Welsh people. With two others, I organised CICFEST in Cardiff Bay a few years back, an attempt to bring the equivalent of L’Orient’s massive Inter-Celtique Festival to Wales, but it made losses owing to political antipathy. Politicians are very afraid of our own British cultural nationalism, yet celebrate and fund multicultural affairs.

Politicians have also decided to put utterly massive wind turbines upon his nationally important and unspoilt battlefield of Owain Glyndŵr at Hyddgen, at Nant-y-Moch. This is the greatest act of vandalism, and destruction, since Trywerin, and again my energies have been taken up with fighting wind farms being set up across Wales. The nation already generates three times the energy it needs, with massive pylons snaking across the land into England. Now Wales also has over five times the density of ineffective, inefficient wind follies compared to sacrosanct English countryside. Wales has one remaining industry – tourism. We do not see massive wind-farms in tourist areas of England, such as the Chilterns and Cotswolds, somehow. My new blog, accessible from this website, will start to address such areas of concern – but – and it is a big but – politicians must begin to fight for Wales rather than their own careers and pensions. However, the elected Welsh government has in effect been a backward step for Wales. Welsh Labour politicians will always do what London wishes, and Plaid Cymru also displays little understanding of how a country should be run. Over 40% of the Welsh Government’s budget goes on health, as Wales becomes a retirement home, with no private industry or future for young people.

Unfortunately, to fight for Wales is to fight its elected representatives, both in the case of windfarms and in celebrating Glyndŵr. This author has repeatedly warned Plaid Cymru that its support for windfarms has alienated any of its supporters who understand science and/or economics. For two decades some of us have been warning that in-migration has killed the British language, causing 90% of the population increase. Democracy seems to be dying, so we vote less as all parties are equally venal and useless, and the internet is the only remaining outlet of the people’s voice. There needs to be anger, not a continuing passive acceptance, of what has happened to Wales in the twentieth century. The nation has been treated shabbily. Its nationhood has almost disappeared, with well over a third of its inhabitants not of Welsh origin. One is tempted to write of ‘England’s lebensraum’ or ‘Europe’s Tibet’, when referring to this unknown and decaying part of the world where Europe’s oldest language and culture is moribund. R.S. Thomas sadly realised that we are ‘an impotent people’, ‘gnawing the bones of a dead culture’. This website is in the very slow process of being updated – please bear with us.

Books by Terry Breverton – Please check the Books Released page for further details upon any book below:

* indicates Welsh Books Council ‘Book of the Month’

2000

An A-Z of Wales and the Welsh (Christopher Davies) 300pp
The Secret Vale of Glamorgan (Glyndŵr) 230pp Millennium Commission Award
The Book of Welsh Saints (Glyndŵr) Hardback 606pp

BREVERTON’S PHANTASMAGORIA – A COMPENDIUM OF MONSTERS, MYTHS AND LEGENDS (Quercus) Hardback 384pp
BREVERTON’S COMPLETE HERBAL – A BOOK OF REMARKABLE PLANTS AND THEIR USES – BASED ON NICOLAS CULPEPER’S THE ENGLISH PHYSITIAN OF 1652 AND COMPLEAT HERBALL OF 1653 (Quercus) Hardback 384pp

2012

I HAVE A DREAM – INSPIRING WORDS AND THOUGHTS FROM THE WORLD’S GREATEST LEADERS (Quercus) Hardback 384pp
BIRD WATCHING: A PRACTICAL GUIDE WITH PHOTOS AND FACTS (Parragon UK) 32ppBACKYARD BIRDS (Parragon USA) 32pp
BREVERTON’S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF INVENTIONS – a compendium of technological leaps, groundbreaking discoveries and scientific breakthroughs that changed the world (Quercus) Hardback 384pp
THE WELSH – THE BIOGRAPHY (Amberley) 384pp
THE PHYSICIANS OF MYDDFAI – CURES AND REMEDIES OF THE MEDIEVAL WORLD (Cambria Books) 294pp

2013

RICHARD III – THE KING IN THE CAR PARK: The Real Story of ‘the Hunchback King’ (Amberley) Hardback 196 pp
OWAIN GLYNDŴR – THE STORY OF THE LAST PRINCE OF WALES (new edition Amberley) 224pp

2014

THE JOURNAL OF PENROSE, SEAMAN - THE NEW ROBINSON CRUSOE (Cambria Books) 388pp
BREVERTON’S BOOK OF WORLD WAR ONE FACTS (Amberley) 360pp
JASPER TUDOR – THE REAL KINGMAKER OF THE WARS OF THE ROSES (Amberley) 320pp